Over the July 4th holiday the US Army rolled out the beginnings ofAmerica’s Army. America’s Army is the US Army’s foray into first person shooters which also doubles as a recruiting tool. The launch occurred in the late hours of July 3rd when several outlets posted the first part of the AA saga, Operations: ‘Recon’ (I snagged my copy from the spiffy servers over atShacknews), while the AA servers went live in the early hours of July 4th. It was a good thing I was able to get the download early since thousands on holiday were waiting to pounce the AA website and servers. A July 5th update on the AA website told just how popular the download was.
America’s Armyis experiencing unprecedented popularity! Just prior to its release, the AA website had an average of 750,000 hits/sec. This was merely a premonition of things to come… In the 36 hours of its release, AA:O RECON has been downloaded by several hundred thousand gamers (thanks to all the folks and the gaming community for sharing in this herculean effort!) At its peak,HomeLAN‘s authentication system has served over 500,000 authentications – averaging 15 every second!
After spending the past few days checking out AA:O RECON, I am impressed. The game, using an advanced version of the Unreal engine, looks beautiful and the attention to detail is superb (check out the swarming bugs around lights). While initial impressions are positive, the game right now is far from flawless. A combination ofbugs(herealso) and overwhelming traffic to the AA:O RECON servers have lead to major trouble connecting to and keeping a connection on available HomeLAN servers. This is a major headache for many since a passing grade in one mission is required to unlock other online maps. Even after playing for several hours on a HomeLAN server, the authentication servers still failed to register the completed requirements. A fix is in the works which should alleviate this problem.
